Frankford man charged with attempted murder

The Phil­adelphia dis­trict at­tor­ney on Sept. 20 filed an at­temp­ted-murder charge against a Frank­ford man whom po­lice shot and crit­ic­ally wounded in April.

Joshua Taylor, 23, of the 4600 block of Worth St., al­legedly poin­ted a gun at an off-duty po­lice of­ficer to prompt the of­ficer to fire his own weapon at Taylor. Taylor was hos­pit­al­ized for a single wound of the chest.

Dur­ing his re­cov­ery, au­thor­it­ies con­duc­ted a “lengthy in­vest­ig­a­tion” in­to the case, the DA’s of­fice said in a prin­ted state­ment. Ini­tially, key de­tails of the in­cid­ent were a mat­ter of dis­pute.

The shoot­ing oc­curred at about 4 p.m. on April 25 on the 4600 block of Worth St. The of­ficer, who has not been iden­ti­fied pub­licly, was help­ing a re­l­at­ive move in­to a house on the block when he al­legedly saw Taylor carry a gun in­to a nearby home, au­thor­it­ies have said.

However, news re­ports at the time quoted wit­nesses who de­scribed a quar­rel between Taylor and the of­ficer, a 17-year po­lice vet­er­an as­signed to West Phil­adelphia’s 18th dis­trict, over a park­ing spot.

Ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial ac­count, when Taylor re-emerged in­to the street, the of­ficer iden­ti­fied him­self as a cop and ordered Taylor to drop the gun. In­stead, Taylor al­legedly poin­ted the weapon at the of­ficer, then ran in­to an­oth­er house. The of­ficer fol­lowed the sus­pect and shot him once in the chest. Po­lice re­covered the sus­pect’s weapon at the scene.

But a wo­man identi­fy­ing her­self as the moth­er of Taylor’s two young chil­dren told news re­port­ers a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of events. Brit­ney Brit­ton said that the of­ficer barged in­to the couple’s home without identi­fy­ing him­self as a po­lice of­ficer, glanced at her, then shot Taylor and ran away.

Taylor was car­ry­ing a gun and had a per­mit for it, Brit­ton claimed at the time.

Taylor also has been charged with ag­grav­ated as­sault, as­sault­ing a po­lice of­ficer, simple as­sault, reck­less en­dan­ger­ment and car­ry­ing a fire­arm in pub­lic. He is jailed in lieu of $500,000 bail and is sched­uled for an Oct. 6 pre­lim­in­ary hear­ing. ••